To usher in the lunar new year, Standard Chartered Bank is collaborating with 8 top Chinese restaurants in town to offer Extravagant 8 menus priced at RM888++ for a table of 8 pax. Details of restaurants and menu plus terms and conditions can be found here.

We were welcomed by Jeannette Han, the owner of Elegant Inn. She's really the walking dictionary of Chinese ingredients and food! Apparently I was told that each meal with her around, we get to learn loads of information on the items that we're eating.

We started off our dinner with

Bountiful Harvest Salmon Losang. The difference here is that all ingredients used are fresh and no pickled items are on the plate. The salmon slices, jellyfish and abalone slices are served separately on another plate. Well, there's a very good reason this was done this way as our waiter Ah Loong starts off by wishing us a prosperous year ahead.

When he dishes in the salmon into the fresh vegetables plate, he said the fish ("yue") represents "nien nien yau yue" (every year is bountiful). Jellyfish is known as "hoi jit" in Cantonese, hence "Jit Jit Siong Sing" (raising higher with each steps) in our career, Malaysian economy, stock market etc. This was when Jeannette intercepted and said most importantly Elegant Inn will "Jit Jit Siong Sing". LOL. The abalone ("bao yue") represents "bao lor marn yau" and "ying yau chun yau" which essentially means one will get all his wishes come true as much as he wants, well about there lah my translation :p

If you're interested, you can watch Ah Loong in action here but he speaks a little soft though.

Woohooo such a meaningful dish eh??? All ready for tossing... and we tossed our way to a bountiful and healthy year ahead. I liked this yee sang as everything tasted so fresh. Like Capt'n Hook described this as a refreshing salad.

Did you know we don't need to serve shark fins to represent your wealth especially at wedding dinners? Seafood soup with top grade seafood would do more justice. Don't look down at this soup tureen as you can only see the chicken inside. This clear broth is double boiled in the tureen for 4 - 6 hours!

When the treasures from the tureen are unearth onto a plate, just look at the exquisite ingredients used! There are "kum wah for tui" (Chinese ham), kampung chicken, top shell from US, dried scallops from Japan, pork ribs and cordyceps flowers.

I loved this soup as I prefered "ching" soup with it's natural sweetness from all the ingredients used.

Next came everybody's favourite... Golden Fried Estuary Garoupa with Chinese Leeks. Well, Estuary Garoupa is also known as Giant Garoupa (the same as those we ate at Gu Yue Tien) or "lung dunn". Over here, the fish fillet is served deep fried on a bed of clear gravy that came with stir fried Chinese leeks, spring onions, celery and bits of "har korn" a type of dried tiger prawns that Jeannette personally brought back from Hong Kong. The fish is perfectly fried and the skin, omigosh is so crispy! Everything on this plate has been executed very well and the vegetables complimented the fish. I've asked the price of this dish ala carte and Jeannette told me it's around RM200, so I think it's better to get out your Standard Chartered Credit Card or find your way to get one to order this Extravagant 8 menu!

This Crystal Prawn - Signature Salted Egg Yolk Style dish is not available in the menu and only specially made for this Extravagant 8 menu. Prawns are replaced in their signature crab in salted egg yolk. Seems like they will only cook this when the restaurant is not overly busy as it requires the head chef to spend 20 minutes just to stir the yolk to the right consistency. The salted egg yolk here is subtle and each prawn is coated lightly with them without over cloying the freshness of the prawns.

We took a break here for a photo moment of Chef Wesley Ng (pssst he's so young horrr and so handsome!) with Tim (he's handsome too ya) presenting the Golden Boneless Stuffed Chicken with Chicken Tomato Salad.

Golden Boneless Stuffed Chicken with Chicken Tomato Salad is the other highlight of the menu. The chicken is deboned and stuffed with prawn paste. A side of the chicken slices salad on tomatoes made the dish very refreshing.

We must bring BoiBoi for this as I know he would really loved this boneless chicken. The skin is sooo crispy and I did not feel it being oily at all! Just look at the prawn paste underneath... not really a paste eh cos can still chunks of prawns there.

Braised Sea Cucumber with Dried Oyster, Fatt Choy & Mushroom is the must have prosperity dish for Chinese New Year. I'm not really a fan of sea cucumber and dried oyster but I did took a bite off Capt'n Hook's portion. The sea cucumber is really thick! Loved the texture too. Since sea cucumber is Capt'n Hook's favourite, he took second helpings. Did you see the size of the dried oyster???

Next up, the rice dish of the evening. We have a Braised Seafood Rice with Australian Scallops, Fresh Crabmeat & Abalone Sauce in Lotus Leaf. It's my first time savouring such a unique rice dish. The rice is already flavourful in the lotus leaf let alone the generous topping of the fresh scallops and crabmeats.

We ended the dinner with a Chilled Japanese Pumpkin Sago with Green Bean and Pan Fried Traditional Rice Cake & Hazelnut Cookies. We were told not to stir the dollop of green bean and eat it up in one mouthful to generate the mouth feel but then a bit too late cos I lifted the spoon for a picture and there goes the green beans. I can taste the natural sweetness of the pumpkin which is not too heavy to end a dinner.

The nian gao (traditional rice cake) is just plainly pan fried, not oily at all too. If you can read Chinese, perhaps the hazelnut cookies represented something prosperous too :p